Call Kate O'Mara a ball-breaking vamp and she'll laugh out loud.

The actress relishes playing high powered, no-nonsense women, with a glare fit to melt an iceberg.

Torrid roles in TV's Howard's Way, Dynasty and Bad Girls helped Kate corner the market in a certain kind of tough, uncompromising female.

However, her latest role sees the actress moving away from the sharp-tongued heartless vixen persona.

Kate stars in a touring production of Daphne Du Maurier's September Tide, which arrives at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff, next Monday and can be seen until the following Saturday.

It's a romantic drama, set in 1948, in which she plays Stella, an older woman who falls in love with her daughter's husband.

"She's certainly not a vamp," Kate says. "Anything but. She's charming and nice.

She's a resolute woman, she knows her own mind, but she's very vulnerable, soft and gentle.

"Attitudes in those days were different. It was much more scandalous for an older woman to fall for a younger man - and it was never expected a mother-in-law should fall for her son-in-law.

"Playing her, there are two things to consider. She's absolutely in love with this young man, but there's also the fact that he's her daughter's husband.

"It's a very, very volatile situation and a challenging part."

Not that Kate is going soft on us, she assures me.

She'd still love to return to TV and another bitchy role, once the lengthy September Tide tour finally ends.

"I'm going to make this my last tour for the time being," Kate promises. "My agent keeps saying they want me for this or that and I find myself in Aberdeen or somewhere on tour - it's hopeless!

"I prefer working in the theatre, playing to a live audience, which responds and you can hear enjoying itself.

"But it would be nice to be able to go home and wait for the phone to ring."

Kate was destined for a career in showbusiness, more or less from the cradle, as she explains: "I was born into a theatrical family.

It's what I was brought up with.

"I've always been involved. I've gone into the family business - that's what it amounts to"

Her first taste came as she watched her mother acting in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"She thought I'd like it because of the pretty fairies and costumes. She wanted me to go backstage and meet the cast, but I was scared of Bottom with his ass's head," she recalls.

"I wasn't a ball breaker in those days!"

As well as acting, Kate has written four books and six shows for the stage, worked as a director and 20 years ago, co-founded the British Actors' Theatre Company.

Wearing her writer's hat, she's presently trying to get her stage adaptation of Trent's Last Case, a detective story written in 1913, into production.

"It was one of the first modern detective novels - after Sherlock Holmes and before Lord Peter Wimsey," she adds.

"You've got to keep earning a living. What can you do?"

Not that work is ever in short supply. New fans keep discovering Kate via appearances in the Saint, the Avengers, the Protectors and even Doctor Who.

"I get mounds of fan-mail from all over the world because all these shows have become cult series and are out on DVD," she says.

And there's always the chance fans may yet get to see her in another super-bitch role on the small screen - it's just a matter of the right deal coming along.

September Tide

Palace Theatre,

London Road,

Westcliff

January 29-February 3

7.30pm (Thurs and Sat matinee, 2.30pm)

Tel 01702 351135